Scott @ the Media Orchard tips us to this post Environmentally Unconscious, a rant about Kia's "Save the Greenbacks" Campaign, posted on Tuesday January 10, 2006. Something which, oddly enough, was posted at the DailyKos Monday Jan 09, but links to Tuesdays post at the Orchard. How twilight zone! ;)

Anyway, their point is that ads parodying Greenpeace type actions when talking about gas guzzling cars ain't very smart. On that we might agree, though I'm much more enraged by the plagiarism, as Toyota did that idea better back in 2004! Super adgrunts, see for yourself:

Acting mayor Vasily Ursu said earlier that showing women’s legs on billboards was contrary to the standards of ethics and advised designers to look for a more creative solution than just capturing bare legs.
Ursu, however, said: "If you show me similar billboards in other cities, I may let them be used again."

Last week we reported on JWT in London placing ads for their "Don't Drink and Drive" campaign in the UK's AutoTrader. Adgrunt Stealthman alerted us to the fact that Clememger BBDO in Wellington, NZ had done the same exact thing in 2001 for LTSA (Land Transport Safety Authority) which appeared in the NZ AutoTrader. The idea won a Clio and other NZ industry awards including ones for media.

They defended it for a long time, the infamous faces advert for digital TV, but the BBC has been forced to withdraw the advert with the creepy head, made up of lots of smaller heads. At the end of November it had only received 400 complaints, but now that number has climbed to 1,300 complaints.
A spokesman for the BBC is trying to save face - heh - by stating that the trailer had simply "finished slightly early", after it "achieved its goal".

The BBC's own website is witness to how much people were genuinly creeped out by the image - comments include:
"As a registered psychotherapist, I wish to protest that this image is disturbingly psychotic. Its unacknowledged aggression could make a fragile viewer ill".
Another entry reads: "I was having my dinner when the advert came on and it was all I could do to keep my food down. The images actually made my skin crawl."

Down in Belgium the animal rights activist group GAIA has gotten their anti-Foie gras campaign banned, sorta. The railway company where the ads were meant to run won't have them because they find the images "too shocking".

The French telecom market is adopting the 118 number for direct enquieries just like in the UK a couple of years ago. And while they were at it, one client in France decided to adapt to the local market the same advertising campaign that made its mark in the UK. The result is this campaign for 118 218, directly taken from the brilliant UK 118 118 campaign by WCRS in London, and proof that some ideas should never cross the Channel.